It’s a big day at Metro HQ in downtown, with Sen. Barbara Boxer and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood here for a town hall meeting on the next federal transportation bill. That is set to start in a few minutes and I’ll post about it this afternoon. In the [continue reading]
Apparently, in an attempt to fix the state budget, Governor Schwarzenegger is hoping to turn the Amber Alert boards on California’s freeways into full color digital displays that funnel advertising messages to drivers as they commute. There are currently 708 message boards, but the plan is to add another 597. [continue reading]
In December, the consulting firm Fairbanks, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates was hired by Metro to conduct a survey of Metro riders to gauge customer opinions on bus and rail service and pricing scenarios as the agency struggles with its finances. Over the course of three days the firm conducted [continue reading]
While The Source is our favorite web site for local transportation news, it’s far from the only one. In fact, there’s a plethora of sites and blogs out there created by dedicated Angelenos that have been keeping the transportation dialogue at the forefront long before this blog was a twinkle [continue reading]
Two Metro Board of Director committees voted on Thursday to add the study of an underground station in Little Tokyo to the draft environmental impact report for the regional downtown connector project. To be clear: this doesn’t mean it’s getting built. Just that it will be studied. The issue in [continue reading]
We finally have some hard numbers, although I caution to take this with a grain of salt since it’s never over until it’s over when it comes to the state budget in California. That said, here are the numbers that Metro government relations staff presented to the Board of Directors’ [continue reading]
The Board of Director’s Measure R committee delayed voting until next month on an agreement with the Gold Line Foothill Extension Construction Authority over how to transfer funds between Metro and the Authority. The Authority is a separate agency set up to build the first phase of the Foothill Extension [continue reading]
Joel Epstein at the Huffington Post says that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s plan to build 30 years of Measure R projects in the next 10 years is a fine idea — but a number of funding reforms will be needed to make it happen. I, too, think it’s a [continue reading]
The budget proposed last month by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is slowly working its way through the Legislature and is being closely watched by Metro. Schwarzenegger’s budget has been criticized by agencies and transit advocates for steering too much money away from transit. The State Senate has fixed that, to some [continue reading]
The Bus Bench, one of L.A.’s most outspoken transit blogs, has launched a new Google Maps mash-up with the ambitious goal of mapping and reviewing every single bus stop and rail station in L.A. by August 30 of this year. To put the challenge in perspective, Metro has 15,967 bus [continue reading]
